Your CGI script is misbehaving strangely with your browser, and you suspect something in the HTTP header is missing. You want to find out exactly what your browser is sending to the server in the HTTP header.

It's hard to keep track of which versions of all the different browsers still have which bugs. The fake server program can save you days of head scratching, because sometimes a misbehaving browser doesn't send the server the right thing. Historically, we have seen aberrant browsers lose their cookies, mis-escape a URL, send the wrong status line, and do other even less obvious things.

To use the fake server, it's best to run it on the same machine as the real server. That way your browser will still send it any cookies destined for that domain. Then instead of pointing your browser at:

http://somewhere.com/cgi-bin/whatever

use the alternate port given in the
new
constructor above. You don't need to be the superuser to run the server if you use the alternate port.

http://somewhere.com:8989/cgi-bin/whatever

If you convince yourself that the client is behaving properly but wonder about the server, it's easiest to use the
telnet
program to manually talk to the remote server.